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Editor's note: Julia Eisenberg is vice president, insights at 20|20 Research, Nashville, Tenn.
“When people talk, listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out, know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice.”
— Ernest Hemingway
While Hemingway intended this advice for aspiring writers, the notion has direct applications for researchers as well – particularly when it comes to qualitative. After all, the ability to listen and observe more completely leads to the type of compelling consumer narratives that evoke emotion, persuade others and earn the right to be shared. To get there, though, one needs the right research method to facilitate productive listening, coupled with best practices for taking in information in the field and a thorough understanding of how to translate the findings into impactful and contagious stories.
How we listen is critically important. With so many options at our disposal, selecting the right research method can be daunting. That’s why listening must start the earliest stages of an engagement; listening to stakeholders and to yourself matters even before the research begins. Tuning in with intention at pre-research stages helps ensure participants can share via the medium that gives the best chance of inspiring complete openness. At this stage it is important to ask some key questions. Do we want subjects to contemplate, remember and open up in a comfortable setting at a comfortable time or do we seek gut reactions – quick and instinctive replies? Essentially, do we want to give our subjects time to think about it or should we keep them moving through the exercise without much time to ponder?
To answer these questions, I find it useful to think about how you might like to feel if joining your study as a participant and to begin your method selection process with that in mind. I might delight in sharing every detail about my favorite television shows with a group of friends and acquaintances but in that same setting I most certainly would not feel as comfortable telling the story of what it was like to have a new baby. While the sensitivity of the topic is important to consider, I encourage researchers to also consider how the method will impact the way you will listen to and interact with respondents.
Many researchers overlook the impact of the quality of listening on what the respondent shares. Instead of investing time and energy here, we tend to focus on the respondent or the guide or the moderator. If the responses (or questions) are perceived as going poorly, it’s easy to blame the actors (respondent, participant, stimuli, etc.). It’s impossible to quantify but if a listening setup is off or mismatched to the topic or respondent, the moderator might overcompensate, the participant might clam up. And so it is not the actors but rather the setup and our listening framework that have failed. Hardly ever have I heard “disappointing research” diagnosed with a bad listening setup but I believe that’s the first symptom we should examine if things don’t go as planned.
And so to ensure we set up a productive listening environment, I always return to defining how I want subjects to feel when they share. When I want to facilitate contemplation, reflection, remembering and projection, I prefer an online journal or in-home ethnographies. The journal is nice because it removes geographic barriers and travel costs and also because it gives participants a safe and familiar space – set up just for them – to share their experience. The moderator can respond to and probe certain parts of the story but the pressure for participants to respond in real time is removed. The therapeutic associations that journaling about an experience offers can expose a depth of understanding not possible with other methods. Similarly, the intimacy of joining someone in their home to learn about a process, product or experience offers a quiet and “on their own turf” atmosphere to allow for deeply exploratory listening and learning.
On the flip side, when I want quick, punchy gut reactions, I love to utilize a group discussion board or qualitative community, live webcam interviews, in-person IDIs or text-based chats. With these methods the goal is still to listen, observe and react but the conversation moves faster. I prefer grouped methods (discussions, communities) when I want to observe how participants explain, debate and disagree about things among themselves. Here I’m an acutely attuned observer-listener, probing where I naturally want to ask for more details but letting the conversation unfold organically. I prefer 1:1 methods or chats when I want to have a lot of control about each individual’s reaction to specific stimuli or creative or prompts. For both approaches here, the stimulating, staccato effect of question and answer, reaction and reply still requires listening well but the listening is more focused and tactical.
Considering the impact our research methods have on one’s ability to listen well makes it easier to select the setup best matched to objectives. In turn, I find having high standards for the quality of listening environment and method provides an incredibly solid foundation for building a strong story from findings, insights and recommendations.
Things that distract us from listening
Once a method is selected and we’re ready to start gathering feedback, we must be honest about the things that distract us from listening well. Our lives are full of distractions. A text message. A tweet. Soccer practice rescheduled. Snow boots outgrown. A new urgent request that needs attention now. The hard truth is that being distracted isn’t an exception, it’s the rule. We’re allowed to multitask – it’s a sign of productivity. Constant busyness is normal, expected, acceptable.
We are good at multitasking and dividing our attention but is that good? When it comes to successful qualitative research, no. Divided attention means diluted absorption. You’re not getting it all because you are not present. This is true for digital and in-person research, and these small splinters – the slight division of attention while listening during a project – destabilize insight exponentially as the project culminates. We know that stories, experiences and emotions are more than 20 times more memorable than facts alone. This is an incredible, tremendous and frightening impact to allow into any study. It is much easier to take the time to plan for effective listening before a study commences than to try to save something later on.
Children these days practice “whole body listening” – which means you listen with your eyes and ears and quiet your whole body. To be present in our research, we need to practice this too. There are ways to do this digitally if you are not meeting your participants in person. Shut down your e-mail. Snooze notifications. Take away the temptation of Google and the infinite universe of internet distractions and show up for your respondents wholly.
About actors, the late Alan Rickman once said he cared most about the “accuracy and intensity of their listening,” because our response to what someone says is most authentic when we’ve truly listened. Think of your most recent studies – how accurately did you listen? How intensely? Were you present or was your mind racing forward to what to say next, and what to say after that, and oh we’re out of milk and I forgot to drop off that package. Shutting out the noise is hard!
Listening well takes practice and discipline that can feel like a burden but there is also incredible freedom in carving out that space. When is the last time you only had to think about one thing? The last time you only had to do one thing? Be great at one thing? While our cultural preference for multitasking won’t be defeated overnight by the concept of better listening, give yourself permission to start small and to explore the impact that disciplined, focused listening can have on one project or one experience. Identifying the distractions – large and small – that keep us from deploying intentional, present listening is a key step in opening up better channels to the great consumer stories we seek.
Evokes stronger emotions
When listening well is prioritized in qualitative research, it evokes stronger emotions – in both respondent and researcher. The more attention we pay to the places where we listened well and really felt something as a result is the surest path to telling a compelling story others will want to hear and brands will want to act on. While we never want anecdotes to be the only path to our conclusions, there is a reason we remember these moments the most. This is where we felt something. This is where our participants felt comfortable enough sharing and where we listened accurately enough to see a memorable moment come to life.
Listening well helps us tune in to what is interesting, controversial and memorable in our research. What is compelling enough to earn our attention is material that will mean something to our stakeholders. And, if we’ve selected the right method, these emotional moments will also tie closely to our objectives and have great impact on the business. Showcasing the emotions we picked up on while listening well has the pleasant effect of making our audience want to know more. Emotions like curiosity, skepticism, surprise and interest are sharpened by attentive listening and these emotions are clear signals that something is important.
For example, we recently tested a new bike rack prototype in the field. It’s a product meant to cater to serious cyclists (which means their bikes are usually quite expensive and the cyclists want to know they’re protected while in transit). Our respondents were savvy and this was not their first time using a bike rack. As we moved through the study, we observed that most of the participants initially put the rack on their car upside down. The majority made this mistake and then after a bit of trial and error realized it was upside down and corrected the issue. We watched this happen several times, asking what they were doing and working hard to listen not only to their explanation but to the running monologue most provided while both making the mistake and righting it. We were learning a lot and gathering some compelling feedback to take back to the product engineers. It wasn’t until we got to one of our most seasoned, experienced cyclists that we were faced with a real “listening dilemma.” Like others before him, this participant put the rack on upside down. Unlike the others, he didn’t realize his mistake. Or correct it. As we’d asked, he put his bike on the rack, locked it down and started to get into the car to drive a bit and finish the test. We waited until the last possible moment (but not too long!) to stop him, because a couple of feet of acceleration and his beloved bike would have fallen right off the rack and onto the road. A BIG deal for these respondents – and our clients! That moment of panic got hearts racing for our researchers, our client and the participant. And while the product team understood the majority had made this mistake (and it wasn’t just a fluke), the memorable story was the one I heard retold again and again. “We wanted to see what would happen but we had to intervene! Imagine if we’d let his bike fall off the rack and on to the road! This guy was almost a pro – if he made this mistake, everyone will. WE HAVE TO CHANGE IT!” The emotion is what everyone remembers most about that research to this day (and, by the way, the prototype was adjusted).
As researchers, we know that a well-told story is compelling and persuasive. Stories help people understand a concept and enhance broad appreciation for insights and ideas. Stories are such a powerful tool for researchers and it all starts with listening well. When good listening provides a compelling story, that story gets shared. It leaves the room – or the phone call – with your audience and lives on long after the project or presentation concludes.
We can do better
It is easy to assume that intentional, attentive listening happens in every qualitative research study. I don’t believe this is entirely true. It is too often implied that qualitative research = great listening and I think we can do better. The good news is the effort to perfect listening in a professional research setting is relatively low. A few small changes in practice and point of view can have meaningful impact. Selecting the method based on the environment best suited for listening to these respondents discuss this topic; removing distractions and paying focused attention to where we experience; and remembering emotions are tools we can use as additions (not replacements) to our current practices.
In what ways can you enhance the quality of listening in your research to lead to the type of compelling consumer narratives that impact our business most? Think about it and give it a try. I can’t wait to hear how it goes!